


John Come Kiss Me Now

by thebasement_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-09-30
Updated: 1999-09-30
Packaged: 2018-11-20 13:06:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11336136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebasement_archivist/pseuds/thebasement_archivist
Summary: More Langly/Byers slash! Byers's enjoyment of some early music gets an unexpected interruption.





	John Come Kiss Me Now

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

 

John Come Kiss Me Now by Merri-Todd Webster

From: "M. T. Webster" <>  
Archive: Yes to allslash, Archive/X, Ruth's L/B page; others please ask.  
Title: John Come Kiss Me Now  
Author: Merri-Todd Webster  
Series/Fandom: The X-Files  
Pairing: Langly/Byers  
Rating: NC-17  
Feedback Address:   
Warnings & Spoilers: No spoilers. Gunmen slash warning; early music warning.  
Disclaimer: Who, me?  
Comments: This is the closest MT gets to songfic, so live it up, folks.  
Thanks to: Te and MJ for taking a look at this, and for writing L/B first and inspiring me to give it a try.

* * *

"John Come Kiss Me Now"  
by Merri-Todd Webster  
(30 April 1999)

It was a Friday night, and John Fitzgerald Byers was alone in the "Lone Gunman" headquarters.

This was an unfortunately rare occurrence, too rare for Byers' liking, but there wasn't much to be done about it. Researching, creating, publishing, and distributing the magazine took up nearly all their time, mixed with the bickering, sniping, and arguments over carryout that had become a way of life.

But tonight, John Byers was alone, and he had cooked himself a solitary supper of an omelette with smoked salmon and poured a glass of wine to accompany it, and now he was indulging one of his secret passions: music.

Langly listened to heavy metal much of the time, with occasional forays into art rock. Frohike liked a variety of jazz and the Beatles and the Stones and their kindred. Byers's passion, however, was classical music in the broadest sense: symphonies, oratorios, Gregorian chant, Renaissance dance music, Beethoven and Handel, Britten and Mahler, what Langly, with heavy irony, called "long-hair music".

No matter. He was alone. Supper was finished, the dishes washed, the wine drunk. He had showered and shaved, tidying the edges of his beard, and put on his old wine-colored bathrobe, which was threadbare over the elbows but comfortable. Byers pressed play on the stereo and then, as was his habit, lay down on the floor, a pillow under his neck, his head centered between the speakers.

Tonight the selection was a CD of music from London in the time of Purcell. As the first notes floated out into the room, Byers felt his shoulders drop, his wrists loosen; he closed his eyes, smiling faintly, and lost himself in the mingling of violin, recorders, guitar, viola da gamba and theorbo.

How had it come to this? Never alone, and yet lonely. Living with two other men with whom he had nothing in common except an unforgettable experience of government perfidy and duplicity. Byers' mouth tightened into a frown, and his eyes fluttered open. He didn't want to think about that right now. He didn't want to think at all. No think. No work. No feel. Just be. Be with the music and the beauty of it, orderly and complex, combining a diversity of tone colors and melodic lines into a rich harmony. His spine uncurled and with it, his soul, moving again into the labyrinth of the music.

From slower, more contemplative pieces to faster, danceable ones. What had it been like to live in a world where educated people learned dances which a roomful of people performed, each person having his or her own specific place in the dance, like the planets in their orbits.... Restlessly, Byers grabbed a deep breath--let it out, slowly, and his ankles turned out, his thighs shifted apart, into deeper relaxation.

The music of the broken consort gave way to a "sett of ayres". Almost against his will, John heard himself humming the infectiously gay "Gavotta con divisiono", the rest at the end of each phrase punctuated with a gentle slap to the belly of the guitar. His feet twitched like they wanted to dance; maybe this album hadn't been the best choice for tonight. But Langly and Frohike would be out for hours, guzzling beer and chowing pizza with Mulder; he had time to listen to anything he wanted.

John Fitzgerald Byers heard the door open.

He was on his feet just in time to catch the sardonic tilt of Langly's head as the other man registered the music playing. "Listening to that longhair music again, Fitz?"

Byers winced. He hated Langly's private nickname for him, bestowed a few weeks ago after a memorable viewing of "Much Ado about Nothing". He hated Langly's alternatives to that nickname even more.

"I expected to be alone," Byers said pointedly.

Langly wandered over to stand in front of the stereo, the tips of his grubby athletic shoes on either side of the pillow where Byers's head had lain a few minutes ago. Head bowed, wrists bent, he appeared to be listening intently to the music. "Frohike got lucky. And Mulder got a case. No fun having beer and pizza by yourself." He turned and gave Byers one of those blank stares that managed to look so... provocative. "Aren't you tired of being by yourself, Fitz?"

"Don't call me 'Fitz'" was on the tip of Byers's tongue. Only, so was Langly's tongue. Pepperoni and Sam Adams, heat and slickness. Out of the corner of his eye, Byers glimpsed sharp knuckles gone almost white, gripping the lapels of his robe.

Langly leaned back. Byers noticed he was breathing kind of heavily, but then, so was Byers himself. The air seemed awfully thick all of a sudden....

"Well?" the blond man asked. Byers raised a hand to wipe his mouth and watched that hand brush across the other man's lips instead.

"Yes."

It was right there on the couch, with the stereo playing. Right there in front of the invisible musicians with their recorders and violin and guitar and the viola da gamba, a wonderfully sensitive instrument that should never have gone out of fashion. Right there, in the "Lone Gunman" headquarters, on the same couch where Frohike had snored that night a few weeks ago. Right there, while a couple of "ayres for the violin" played serenely, Ringo Langly pushed John Fitzgerald Byers into a sitting position, opened up his belted wine-colored bathrobe, peeled down his solid-color brown boxers, and went down on him. Hungrily, as if pizza and beer had only sharpened his appetite for something more.

Byers lowered his gaze from the stained ceiling just in time to prevent his eyeballs from rolling back into his skull all the way and focused instead on the mop of yellow strands draped over his crotch. Hesitantly, he lifted a hand and settled it on the crown of Langly's head. Despite its appearance, the younger man's hair was clean and soft, a little tangled now at the end of the day, but Langly washed the wispy, stringy, flyaway mane every day, some days twice, and it was... silky, to the touch. Byers watched his hand circle over the yellow hair, caressing, then twine into it until he was gripping viciously, fingernails scraping the oily scalp.

The mind-sucking wet heat left Byers's cock, making him whine, and Langly shook his head. "Easy, Fitz, not so much--" Byers loosened his grip but didn't let go, and Langly took him in again, sucking, sweeping his tongue up and down the length.

It didn't last long. Byers didn't last long. He shoved his free hand into his mouth, curled into a fist, and shouted around it as his body let go and his mind went with it, and Langly took it all. When he was something like conscious again, Langly was leaning on his lap, sharp elbows digging like thorns into Byers's knees, staring at him with wide, curious grey eyes.

"What's this piece called, Fitz?"

His mouth dropped open. His brain fizzled softly. The answer floated across his tongue like smoke from the tip of a cigarette. "'John Come Kiss Me Now'," he replied.

"Yeah, exactly." Langly's mouth latched onto his again, and John Fitzgerald Byers didn't feel lonely at all.

*********

DISCOGRAPHY: _A Choice Collection: Music of Purcell's London_ by the Palladian Ensemble, on Linn Records, HON CD 5041. Variations on the tune "John Come Kiss Me Now" by Thomas Baltzar (c. 1630-1663).


End file.
